Druze Reincarnation Narratives

This book is concerned with conceptions of rebirth among the Druze in the Middle East. Based on ethnographic field research and interviews with interlocutors, the book explores constructions of personal and collective identities from the perspectives of social anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, cultural geography, and political science.

This book follows the journey of Druze individuals who can remember their former lives and go on search for their previous families. For the Druze, an ethno-religious minority in the Middle East split between different nation-states, such cases and related discourses embody ambivalent bridges between personal, familial, and ethnic identities. The contributions in this book, presented by Eléonore Armanet, Nour Farra Haddad, Gebhard Fartacek, Tobias Lang, Lorenz Nigst, and Salma Samaha, draw on ethnographic inquiries and illuminate the broad field of Druze conceptions of rebirth and group coherence against the backdrop of everyday challenges and recent conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

Autorentext

Gebhard Fartacek holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Vienna and works as a senior research associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS). His ethnographic field research focuses on pilgrimage and local conceptions of holiness (baraka), stories and discourses dealing with jinns and the evil eye, ethnic-religious boundaries, conflict resolution, and coping strategies in the Middle East.

Inhalt

Reincarnation - Transmigration of souls - Druze - Minorities - Ethnic-religious boundaries - Endogamy - Kinship studies - Anthropology, Oriental studies - Cultural geography - Political science, Ethnographic field research - Episodic interviews, Case studies - Arabic - Syria - Lebanon - Israel - Palestine - Jordan - Middle East